Springtime Sun Returns!

Lovely sight (and bonus - no bird poop this morning!)

Race Car

Aside from "Race Car" being a palindrome, which are a pretty cool bunch of words, one of my friends is pretty awesome at driving the electronic and real ones (race cars, not palindromes!). 


Nick entered a competition, playing Gran Turismo 5 for PS3 with 54,000 competitors online for 3 months, finishing second in the first round. He went on to National Finals in Orlando, Florida with only 31 others. Here, he finished in the top 16, got quoted (mostly accurately) in the Times, and earned a spot in the final round at the world famous Silverstone Circuit in the UK. They will be driving REAL cars this time, in addition to being tested physically and mentally... and maybe even get on the reality show that is in the works! There are lots of worthwhile links in this paragraph.  


Nick is going to England on Friday to compete, and needs as much support as possible in his not so easy quest to become a professional race car driver. 


How can you help? I knew you were going to ask, so:


Search for him on Facebook, "Like" his page (Nick Fontana, Athlete, Boston, MA) and then you can follow him as much as you follow me :-) Either way, updates will come via me on Nick's progress in England because it's just ...pretty awesome. 


Good luck Nick!

Sudoku and Stuff

I finished the Metro Sudoku puzzle on the T this morning, so I thought I'd follow that feeling of productivity with an update! And yes, I'm referring to the "Easy" version. The "Hard" puzzle has yet to be mastered, and well done to any of you who've taken it down. I'm going to make it my first mission for this week.

This postcard, featured on postsecret this week, is a nice follow up to my curiosity about random things from last week. Nice to know there are other like-minded people out there... and I agree with this person as well.

My second mission for this week is to find the most absurdly wind resistant and cheerful umbrella that I can to increase my excitement about all of this rain and to not end up consistently looking like this (rain can also apply crazy make up, believe it or not) or this and wanting to do this. Perhaps Grandma has the right idea...

You will also enjoy this, perhaps the most out of anything here today. That is your reward for getting to the end of the post and surviving the failed rapture. Yay!

Have a magnificent Monday, all!

Why do...

This might be the first truly drifting post. 


First, I apologize for jinxing us in my previous post about perfect weather to walk to work. The death clouds and rain are going to end soon, I promise hope. Or maybe, I should say this will never end, if the mentality is the same, for it to stop immediately? 


Secondly, school is out for the summer, which has left my brain with much more drifting time than usual and much fewer people with whom to discuss said driftings. My classmates and I are usually curious about  the same things (often because we've read the same article and are having similar, or entirely opposing, thoughts). Being the person that I am, there will probably come to be a theme, eventually, to the these driftings, and incidentally blog posts, along the lines of public health/women/children/disparity/sex/human rights/baking/running/yoga/you get the idea.


So, I began to wonder about different things with my friend, Google, and simply wrote the words, "Why do..." which Google tried to automatically complete with what people most typically search for when they start with those words. The top three results, in order were:


Why do men cheat?
Why do cats purr?
Why do we dream?


Wow.


I'm not going to touch the first one. I didn't look at the results, so I really don't know. I don't think Google has that answer either. There are obviously a whole slew of reasons, and I don't want this blog to become a place where genders are polarized or stereotypes are reinforced. But the image of someone Googling that is a far cry from someone curious about cats and dreams. That was a little sad.

BUT like the first question, there are apparently many possible reasons that cats purr and for our dreams.  If you don't want to click on the links, cats purr to self-soothe, communicate with young, during social contact with owners, recover from an injury and improve bone density. Our first cat, who purred so loud that hearing the TV was difficult, must have had really dense bones. This is pretty cool all by itself but even moreso since their purring can be further researched for possible cures for bone loss, or prevention of the loss in the first place. In terms of humans, Freud says we dream because our unconscious mind is unleashing its desires, thoughts, and motivations, but others say we dream as a response to signals within our brain during REM sleep... really as it turns out there are lots of theories on this.

I think there are two conclusions to be drawn from this short visit with Google:

1. Way too many people are unfaithful (or suspected to be) in relationships. Ouch.

2. I am really curious. But seriously, it's pretty awesome how little we know about pretty much everything.

Hopefully you have enjoyed these newfound facts and rather pointless rambling :-)

Luck of the Irish or Murphy's Law?

Happy Friday!

So, in case you were unaware, we are currently in the midst of the few weeks bestowed upon Boston every Spring and Fall of perfect walking weather. Not too cold, encouraging clenching of one’s every muscle to maintain heat and not too warm, encouraging sweat to drench your clothes on the way to or from an event where you would rather not be damp with perspiration. I like to take advantage of this and walk to and/or from work if I have the time.

This morning was particularly beautiful, sunny after days of dense, dark clouds. I chose to walk the long way, through the pretty, blooming side streets of the South End, then slipped through the tall buildings of the Back Bay, reaching the swan boats and the Public Garden and then carefully walking along the crooked brick sidewalks of Charles Street. I crossed the Longfellow into Kendall Square, then walked along the tree lined Binney Street on the final approach to my office.

As I’m happily walking along, listening to Pandora (since I haven’t yet reached the monthly limit), something hits me on the shoulder. I immediately know what this is, but I look down to check anyway. Yes, confirmed: the fifth bird poop of my life.

This is astounding to me, in terms of odds, since some people go their entire lives without being pooped on by a bird. A slew of unkind words cross my mind as I inspect the damage as best I can while continuing my progress toward work. I still have a few minutes before I reach anywhere that I can do anything to fix this, so I begin to ponder: Is this good luck, as everyone says, or not?

This is undoubtedly better than the first time, when a bird pooped in my hair. It is not quite as easy to fix as when a seagull pooped on my leg at the beach, and I could simply pop in the ocean for a quick swim. Definitely not as bad as the third time, when I was pooped on as a thirteen year-old, surrounded by friends at a birthday party, then suddenly outcast by these friends for having poop on me (as if it were a social faux pas I had committed or something I intended to happen!). It's probably comparable to the last time I was pooped on, where my sunglasses saved my hair from yet another attack by my feathered enemies. It has come to the point of silent prayer when walking under a flock of flying birds of any kind.

In this case, I have mostly protected my work clothing with a light jacket that doesn’t require any special cleaning. Mostly meaning this one apparently really had to go and there was splatter on the bottom part of the leg of my jeans… which I figure very few people will notice after cleaning. Bonus! I don’t have to go through the day with (too much) clear evidence of this event, nor do I have to perform crazy acts of cleaning or pay Andy, the friendly dry cleaner downstairs, as a result of this bird so kindly relieving itself on me. I also know I will most likely have a chance to clean the jacket before seeing others.  AND I don’t have to go very long before cleaning this. Another perk.

But, it’s still bird poop, a mysterious hybrid of solid and liquid waste. Birds eat worms and seeds, so essentially I have digested worm and bird food on my jacket. Delightful. It’s still on me, and it is still gross (though thankfully not too smelly). I can certainly see the silver lining of this particular unfortunate timing on the part of this bird and me, but I don’t consider it good luck. It seems much closer to Murphy's Law. Consider this a challenge to anyone who has been pooped on an equal number of times, or at an equal rate, to prove me otherwise.

Happy Friday… the 13^th ;-) 

5 minutes of hilarity

Thank you all for the overwhelming response to the previous entry. Props to Cindy (Mom!) for entering the blogging world and officially commenting. Pretty unanimously, people agree that Hannah is wise to completely cut all ties with Frank. Certainly Frank's loss, but definitely better off for all of the residents of our lovely little home in the South End. Yay for no midnight buzzers! And... yay for establishing that the electronic communication etiquette in this early stage says that such behavior deserves ignoring that person. And being ignored = being dumped. Next!

Now onto 5 minutes of hilarity:

Recently, I discovered that Pandora has a monthly limit to how many hours you can listen. This was shocking, disappointing, and left me in search of other things to listen to at work. (If anyone has any suggestions, they are certainly welcome.) Grooveshark is a bit high maintenance sometimes when I don't want to pay enough attention to pick my own songs. So, I decided to abandon music and jump into the world of Ted Talks much more than I have previously. Ted Talks are about pretty much anything, from recent events to cool inventions or companies, given by people successful in that field, and usually quite entertaining. There will probably be more of these posted, but this one was under the "funny" category and short, so it seemed worthwhile. That's when I stumbled upon this little gem about a woman having The Talk with her daughter. This comes with a fair warning not to listen when open and excessive laughter is unacceptable. I think I hurt a rib stifling mine.

Enjoy!

Welcome! ...and Electronic Dating Etiquette

Hello and welcome!

So drift is apparently a synonym for thought, on the Thesaurus feature of dictionary.com. One of the definitions that I also liked was an accumulation, such as that of snow or sand. I prefer to think of sand at the beach rather than snow, as we're just emerging from winter. Accumulations of thoughts on different topics was also kind of a neat idea since they could all build on each other, or conflict in interesting ways, forcing the overall idea to shift or change unexpectedly. Hmm. Drifts was also good since I won't always want to talk about electronic dating etiquette, but that is today's topic. Who knows what will come of this, and it certainly won't be updated daily, but it could be fun. It might be a good outlet instead of bombarding people with emails about the lack of female condoms in the world.

This one goes out to Hannah (and Rachel, the mischievous witness)...

So last night, still recovering from Cuatro de Mayo, there was quite the commotion. All happily perched on the couch, post-dinner and our almost daily trip to nearby Walgreen's (where you can get a Pap Smear if you'd like) and pre-retiring to bed, a suitor began texting Hannah. We will maintain this man's anonymity and call him Frank. Frank began texting Hannah at roughly 10:30pm, only asking where she was. As the texting unfolded, there was some flirtation but NO invitation, blatant or implied, on Hannah's part. Frank lives nearby, and proceeded to invite himself over. At 11:25pm, Frank buzzed our very loud buzzer not once, but twice. Frank also called Hannah no once, but twice, in addition to several text messages demanding that she let him in and not pretend to be asleep. Frank remained outside on the sidewalk staring up at the windows (props to Rachel for creeping on the creeper... I wonder if he feels violated, now too) for at least ten minutes from the time he arrived. Throughout all of this, Hannah did not answer his calls, respond to his texts, nor was Frank allowed into our previously quiet home.

The story continues into today with several text message apologies. Hannah has not responded to any of them, thinking that she is better off not giving him any reason to continue contacting her. Unfortunately, Frank is a neighbor who lives very close and seeing him again is quite realistic.

Let's entirely forget that Frank was out drinking for Cinco de Mayo. Entirely forget that Frank and Hannah have been out for drinks one time ever.

Even if you don't care about the previous story, my (our) questions are:
1. What is the electronic etiquette here? Our generation is sort of responsible for establishing these guidelines since texting and cell phones have not existed for that long. Areas of gray will continue to exist, but it would be nice to get a general consensus here, at least among people I consider reasonable and intelligent.

The way I see it, there are two options for Hannah: Say nothing and continue the silence being one. The other being a very honest message calling him out for disrespectful behavior and politely but firmly telling him to stop contacting her.

2. Is he out of line? The impromptu attempted visit is of course, but what about the rest of his communication, yesterday and today? He may have thought he was being sweet and romantic, but he just looks like a stalker now.

3. Anyone have any similar stories they'd like to share?

Drift away!